RFK Jr defends his family’s approval of wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his father’s and uncle’s approval to wiretap the late Martin Luther King Jr., claiming there was “good reason” to monitor him at the time.

Kennedy claimed his uncle, the late former President John F. Kennedy, and his attorney general Robert F. Kennedy had to allow the tapping for political reasons, and he said doing so would prove whether then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s belief that King was a communist was true.

“There was good reason for them doing that at the time,” Kennedy Jr. told Politico on Sunday. “Because Hoover was out to destroy Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and Hoover said to them that Martin Luther King’s chief was a communist. My father gave permission to Hoover to wiretap them so he could prove that his suspicions about King were either right or wrong. I think, politically, they had to do it.”

The tapping was approved in 1962 after Hoover claimed King was a national security threat, and it remained in place until 1965. The tappings did not show any communist leanings from King, but they did show extramarital affairs, which were used to blackmail the civil rights leader. 

Kennedy Jr. claimed that his father would likely have fired Hoover in his second term had he not been assassinated, and he said the trio were betting their careers on Hoover’s suspicions.

“They were betting not only the civil rights movement but their own careers. And they knew that Hoover was out to ruin King,” Kennedy Jr. said.

Kennedy Jr. also said his uncle likely notified King of the tappings privately.

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Kennedy Jr.’s support of his relatives comes amid his run for president, but it is a change from his effort to cast himself as a champion of U.S. civil liberties. The independent candidate is considered controversial over his stance against vaccinations and his belief that his uncle was killed by the CIA, not Lee Harvey Oswald. He has also claimed that Sirhan Sirhan did not necessarily kill his father. 

Kennedy Jr. left the Democratic ticket to run independently, and he trails both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in a theoretical matchup.

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